I’ll be blunt.  The CW sucks and I’m having trouble mustering up the enthusiasm to write about it.  But, I’ll give it a whirl anyway.  Surely there won’t be anything as disastrous as The Beautiful Life: TBL this fall!  (oh wait, Hellcats. Nevermind.)

I won’t comment on Dawn Ostroff personally, but her network  is a downright embarrassment.  The point of The CW was to be really just to merge UPN and The WB using each network’s strongest shows.  I initially would have preferred they just kept The WB branding and simply cherry picked the best of UPN.  (Yes, “Best of UPN” does sound ridiculous.)  But if they were going to take the President of UPN instead of The WB and let her turn the network into this mess, then I’m glad The WB signed off and its legacy wasn’t allowed to be tarnished with this crap.  That said, I still watch a few things on this pseudo-network.  I’m embarrassed to say I have seen every episode of 90210, and found season one to have far more potential than the totally uneven sophomore season.  Perhaps it was more just the hope for an actual story for the old school characters, but I did enjoy some of the newer characters as well.  That was all but gone this season.  Life Unexpected is better than your average CW show but overall has been hit or miss, but I feel it has a lot of growth potential in the vein of 7th Heaven, so CW was actually wise in giving this one a chance to grow.  The most “Unexpected” part of the show is that The CW actually green-lit a show that can’t really be promoted with “OMFG.”  Lastly, Melrose Place. It was actually a good show, and then they axed the dreadful Ashlee Simpson-Wentz and added Heather Locklear.  Melrose Place was a fun, campy, dramatic, well-acted (save for Ashlee) s  that I had a mindless hour of fun watching.  Naturally, it didn’t mesh with The CW’s average viewers mindset (you know…the people who actually use “OMFG” in their actual vocabulary) and it was canceled.

Last year it was all about reboots (90210, Melrose Place) and unintentionally funny dramas that were so poorly done that they were laughable at best (The Beautiful Life: TBL).  Once that fizzled out, it became clear that they’d have to take things in a new direction if they were to ever grow this network into anything resembling a…well, network.  Which brings us to this season which includes a reboot of a ’90s action-drama Le Femme Nikita, this time simply called Nikita.  They are wisely using their one strong new show from last year, Vampire Diaries, to launch it on Thursdays.   Supernatural, meanwhile, shifts to Fridays where it will be paired with the tenth, and final, season of Smallville.  Lastly, we also have a show that looks so  laughably bad that the only reason you may watch it is not because you want to see a drama series but rather watch a show that is so bad that you’ll laugh at it: Hellcats. So the moral of the story here is: CW hasn’t really learned any lessons.  They are shuffling their lineups around a bit, so that’ll do….nothing really.  When it comes to The CW, I don’t care, I don’t get it, I just write about it.  If it affects me (As the cancellation of Melrose Place depressed me) sobeit, but this network is a total joke.  At least I get a good chuckle out of it.

Mondays

8:00 – 90210
9:00 – Gossip Girl

Tuesdays

8:00 – One Tree Hill
9:00 – Life Unexpected

Wednesdays

8:00 – America’s Next Top Model
9:00 – Hellcats

Thursdays

8:00 – Vampire Diaries
9:00 – Nikita

Friday

8:00 – Smallville
9:00 – Supernatural